In 1963, the Beach Boys harmonized their way into mine, and a memory that lingers.

Published in Entertain, Enlighten and Empower.

Memories

Memories are like God. They become real once we give them meaning.

What was it like to be 14? Was his memory of these incidents the same at 21 as it would be at 50? Or today, on the cusp of 75?

Or do memories change, like our perception of God, as did his family’s front lawn after his two brothers and he sold their childhood home after their mother died at 96 in 2017?

Before the new owners built the horror in the photo, the lawn was grass at a 10% gradient.

That required weekly mowing.

A task his dad assigned to his eldest son in his 14th year. His engineer dad had attached a rope to the green Lawnboy mower so he could cut the grass vertically, up and down.

The first time he tried this method, the rope broke. The priests — yes, in 1963, there were three priests at Sacred Heart parish — and nuns — yes, seven Habits in eight elementary years, taught him one version of a God who commanded him to honor his mother and father.

So he discarded the rope, mowed crosswise, and didn’t tumble into the street.

He honored his father by choosing a different path. It would have been a Bar Mitzvah moment if he had been Jewish instead of Catholic.

Later that day, his cousins Jim, Dan, and Terry arrived from Des Moines. When Jim, his teenage contemporary, walked into his bedroom, the room behind the dormer in the photo, The Beach Boys’ new 45 In My Room, was playing on his record player.

Yesterday, 61 years later, when he listened again, the polished harmony of “There’s a world where I can go and tell my secrets to” came attached to a memory linked to a feeling that has dogged him for six decades.

That feeling has never gone away, even though the evidence from his life would easily convict it by a jury of peers.

But being a boy, despite being flush with the lawnmower victory, he didn’t admit this secret to his room or anyone else.

The bedroom

He didn’t discuss it with Peter, his twelve-year-old brother who shared the bedroom, or with his parents.

Or with Pat, his eight-year-old brother who, for some reason, never understood, had the bedroom behind the other dormer, ALL TO HIMSELF.

The record player lay on a table between Peter and his beds. Next to it, an orange transistor radio sat on his side of the surface. He had gotten it for his 13th birthday. It opened up a private world of rock and roll introduced by disc jockey Lou Gutenberg of KSTT in Davenport, Iowa.

On a table just inside the bedroom door squatted a large window fan. During hot summer nights, the dormer window, two feet from his bed, would be open, the thin cotton drapes fluttering, the fan rumbling, and he would be alone with his thoughts and a single white earphone in his left ear. Lou introduced him to In My Room. It meant something to him because he didn’t have a room alone and didn’t speak out loud about his feelings of inferiority.

Instead, he lied to Jim about General Science.

Track II

Until he took the Graduate Record Exam at 27, he never scored well on achievement tests such as the Iowa Test for Basic Skills. One year, he’d be up and the next down, sometimes way down.

As a result, when he started high school in 1963, he was put in General Science and World History, two Track II courses, for students who likely would not be going to college.

All his friends at his private Catholic school, every single one, were only in Track I subjects. The same was true of Jim at his school in Des Moines.

At 14, he was oblivious to a lot in his little world. But he knew exactly what Track II meant. He felt the II on his forehead as he read about Hawthorne’s Hester Prynne’s A of Shame in Track I English that year.

So when Jim started to talk about his first year in high school, he saw his science notebook lying on his bed. What should he say? After the first few weeks of school, he knew Mr. Jepsen’s Science was easy. And he knew it was easy because school officials and teachers had such low expectations of students like him.

Later in life, he would understand that figuring out how to mow a 10% gradient lawn horizontally and seeing the context of his school’s tracking system would be signs of intelligence.

But all he could muster in that bedroom at 14 was an “I can’t believe how hard my Science class is” as he held his red science notebook up, far enough away so that Jim would not be tempted to snatch it away.

The mystic chords of memory

I no longer believe in the God of my childhood.

The God who commanded me to honor my Father.

However, try as I might, I can’t leave God behind. The religion section of my library includes well-worn covers.

The most worn is the late Protestant theologian Marcus Borg’s The Heart of Christianity, which describes two worldviews, religious and non-religious.

The religious worldview believes there is a nonmaterial level of reality, a MORE.

In my 75th year, the forest is more compelling than the trees.

I attended my high school class of 1967’s 55-year reunion two years ago.

Our graduating class was around 250.

One of my classmates, Diane, approached me and said, “You know, Paul, you and I are the only ones in our class who earned a Ph.D.”

As we chatted, I thought about that 14-year-old kid desperate to hide the shame of not being smart enough from his cousin.

And how that desperation to prove oneself has never gone away.

Next month, a few extended family members are meeting for lunch. Jim will be there.

Whenever we meet, we talk about shared experiences growing up. About a year ago, he told me his father, my Uncle Al, made him pay for his high school education at the private school he attended. So, Jim worked late nights and weekends at the Post Office.

All of a sudden, I saw my cousin in a different light.

In his First Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln spoke of the “mystic chords of memory.”

My teenage bedroom memories are linked to a chord not so mystic.

Still, they’ve traveled a long way accompanied by a soundtrack.

Lincoln used his interpretation of American history to explain America to its people.

To give them a sense of who they are.

My memories do the same for me.

I hope yours does for you.

Today’s random word is anxiety; the genre is historical fiction.

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A Drabble is a concise 100-word story that respects your busy schedule. Your presence here matters. Please stay on the page for thirty seconds so you will count as a reader. Thank you

This story was published in Medium’s Fiction Shorts.

*

James: “Sometimes I feel like I am doing penance.”

Edward: “How long was your third great-grandfather governor of Mississippi?”

James: “Four years, 1904–1908. He was a complicated man. But a racist, even by the standards of the time.”

Edward: “You’re not like him.”

James: “After we close, at dusk, I walk around the grounds full of anxiety. It’s like I’m holding something back.”

Edward: “Hey, you’re the only white guy on the staff. Are you thinking about quitting?

James: “While walking around last night, I stopped at the Akoto-Bamfo sculpture and wept.

I’m sticking around.”

Edward: “Thank You.”

__________________________________________________________________________________

I took this photo from the Rosa Parks Library and Museum in Montgomery, Alabama. You can read about James K. Vardaman here.

Please, Joe, do the right thing.

*

Humans can learn a lot from sitting on a back porch.

At least, this human did.

He thinks he’s superior, somehow not a part of nature, because he surrounds himself with wire mesh and sits 15 feet above the action in a cushioned chair while watching a parade.

Today, there was a coyote, fox, turkey, squirrel, and a herd of deer: doe, buck, and two fawns.

The fawn in the photo lagged. And then she hinged, chomped, paused, reset, and gamboled after her family.

The mother and father did not need such antics. They’d been there and done that.

Unfortunately, he can imagine himself 50 instead of a month away from 75. Or even, on a good day, with a knee bend or two, 15.

He knows the lies he tells himself.

And wants to believe the lies others tell themselves.

And tell us.

If they can do it, so can he.

But he has friends who are 80 and can’t do things they could have done five years earlier. And he knows what he can’t do today, what he could do five years ago.

He’s a Democrat who thinks Joe Biden has been a good President. Until the night of June 27, he thought Joe Biden was like LeBron James, the exception that proves the rule. At 39, James is playing the game of basketball outside the normal boundaries of age.

Instead, he saw Joe as the formerly great Willie Mays at 41 misplaying two fly balls in the 1973 World Series.

*

He knows what he saw on June 27; he’s no fool.

So now joins with most Democrats who believe President Biden should step aside. (source)

The temptation is for all of us to believe we are the exceptions.

We see ourselves, again, like that fawn.

Fortunately, we can also imagine a different outcome where we see our lies for what they are.

We can imagine ourselves on a back porch, observing how nature works — admitting our yearnings.

Seeing how these can so quickly morph into self-deceptions.

And then thinking:

The other guy lies to us all the time. Probably to himself as well.

I should be different.

____________________________________________________________________________________

Note to my readers: I am torn about the “Should Joe Biden step aside question.” I take one side in this story. Robert Hubbell provides a compelling argument for why President Biden should remain the nominee.

Paul Gardner – Mediu

And one Don can’t refuse.

Today’s random word is closely.

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A Drabble is a concise 100-word story that respects your busy schedule. Please stay on the page for thirty seconds so you will count as a reader.

This story was published in Medium’s Fiction shorts. The prompt was to use the word “closely” and to begin with the sentence “They were meant to be forgotten.”

The Washington Monument

Sunrise

Joe: “They were meant to be forgotten — even Washington and Lincoln. Mr. President, thank you for meeting me. We didn’t shake hands last week. Let’s remedy that now.”

Don: “You’ve got a firm grip, Joe. My people can’t ever know about this meeting.”

Joe: “Don, look closely at me. I’m old and tired; I can’t do this anymore. I will soon be forgotten. Just like them, and so will you.

Don: “What do you want from me?”

Joe: “I’ll pardon you for everything. You’ll drop out. I’ll do the same.”

Don: “It’s a deal, Mr. President.”

Try this antidote to insomnia.

*

It’s 4:13 AM. I’m always up this early. It’s when I write. However, this morning, I’m also, as they say, stewing in my juices.

My partner Rebecca and I watched last night’s debate between the two candidates for the American presidency. We’re Biden supporters, so perhaps you know what I mean.

When we turned in, Rebecca said she would begin her insomnia routine. She knew she would need help falling asleep. I tossed and turned for another hour or so, helpless.

I’ve been up since 3, an hour earlier than usual. I have no antidote for insomnia.

This story is about hers.

You can adapt it to your circumstances.

I’ll start with a bit of background.

The Context

That’s Rebecca, in the photo, at rest.

She is 72, soon to be 73.

And a biking fiend.

Later this morning, she’ll do another 23 miles in preparation for next month’s Register’s Annual Bike Ride Across Iowa. 2024 will be the 51st RAGBRAI.

Rebecca will join 20,000 riders for seven days across southern Iowa, from the Missouri River to the Mississippi. They will bike 434 miles including 18, 375 feet of climbing.

Iowa isn’t Kansas. And it isn’t flat.

This will be her sixth consecutive RAGBRAI. Accompanying her are three friends. Meet the intrepid members of The Wheel Thing at a rest stop in 2023.

Each year, Rebecca cycles 800 miles to prepare. She’s now at 585. Fortunately, our community is surrounded by a beautiful circular 11-mile trail. Unfortunately, for those of us not preparing to trek across our state, Trout Run includes many steep switchbacks.

Rebecca was pulling away from me yesterday on one of the steep hills at the beginning of the trail.

We start together, but quickly, she hits her flow state and leaves me behind. She takes a five-minute break for water and a small energy snack when she finishes the first go-around.

By then, I’d landed and contentedly ridden back home. Rebecca reversed the route, going up where she went down and vice versa.

The Insomnia Cure

Rebecca calls herself a head person. If you know the Enneagram personality system, she’s a number Five. She meets the world through her mind and thinks everything through.

And through.

Sometimes, she finds it hard to slow her thinking down.

After 90 minutes of Biden and Trump last night, she said, “I knew I would need help falling asleep.”

So, what did you do? I ask.

I started with my shoe clip in the driveway.

And then I asked myself which way we went at the trailhead, right or left?

I get 3/4 mile along the river and ask, WHO ELSE IS THERE BUT JOE?

I gently tell myself, You’re not supposed to be thinking.

I see the squirrel.

And Dug Road looks so beautiful. So green. The lighting was fantastic.

And WHAT WILL THE NEW YORK TIMES SAYS?

Again, I tell myself you can’t think about this.

I return to the ride.

Seven miles in, I fell asleep at the top of the steepest switchback.

Rebecca told me that if she doesn’t fall asleep right away on a typical night, she retraces that day’s bike ride precisely as she remembers it and is asleep by mile two. Last night, it took to mile seven.

Hours later, but still too early, she woke up.

When that happens, I go back to where I stopped, in this case, to the top of that switchback, and continue the ride. Almost immediately, I fell back asleep.

Why does this strategy work for Rebecca?

“When I bike, I leave the world behind.”

That’s Rebecca’s answer to why biking has become a passion.

Now, she’s turned this dedication into a strategy against sleeplessness.

She has trained her mind to return to her latest ride. That’s important. It’s the particulars of the ride, the squirrel, for example, that she focuses on. And if she reawakens, she returns to the exact ride spot where she fell asleep and continues.

Isn’t this a form of meditation? Cued not by a word or mantra but by images of a recent experience.

And not just any experience. But one that has been imprinted in the synopses of her brain through hours and hours of enjoyment.

Ready to be called upon when needed.

When I need to cut off the circle of thoughts, I return to the imagined comfort of my bicycle memories.

Do you have a passion that removes you from the world of trouble?

For me, it’s walking.

The second Presidential debate is scheduled for Tuesday, September 9th.

Rebecca’s ready.

I’m working on it.

What makes you who you are?

Serious

Patricia Ross, a seasoned therapist, shares a compelling story of personal transformation, drawing from the experiences of one of her clients.

In her narrative, Ross vividly portrays a person who moves from a binary existence to a more complex reality, where he starts recognizing his role in shaping his future.

Gradually, the man embarks on a journey of self-discovery, exploring his preferences and interests, thereby transitioning towards a more enriched, three-dimensional life.

Step by step, he asks why he is the way he is. As he becomes more curious about himself, he becomes more interested in others.

Patricia has written a terrific story, and I loved the three-dimensional metaphor.

Who is that person who looks back at us from the mirrors?

He’s complicated.

In big and small ways.

He doesn’t like the confinement of labels.

When even he sees only a single reflection.

If he’s that way, then you are too.

Silly and, sadly, true

For example, take another gander at that fellow in the mirror.

He doesn’t like in-person shopping because he has a hard time saying no.

Often, his first response needs to be corrected.

But the striped shirt looked good on the window model.

He also felt guilty about buying from Amazon.

Purchasing locally makes him feel superior, like owning a Subaru Forester in southwest Iowa.

Besides, clad in that shirt, he imagined himself looking like soccer great Lionel Messi on the beach in the Michelob Ultra ad.

However, he remembered that Messi, also 5’7″, wears Argentina’s vertical stripe uniform.

He found the shirt on a rack.

It’s funny how, inside the store, it appeared green.

When he tried it on, it stayed green, and what about those stripes?

Would Lionel wear horizontal stripes?

He had better text Rebecca; she’d tell him what to do.

While waiting for her reply, he spotted an orange shirt.

Orange was the color of the Netherlands national soccer team. Or was it Holland’s?

It was a muted orange, and he wouldn’t look like a pumpkin.

He’d never worn orange.

Even Darrell, the Trump supporter who lives next door, wore more colorful shirts.

Rebecca replied a few minutes later: “The green shirt is OK, the orange is better, without the red hat.”

When she says OK, I know she means no.

He’ll get a compatible cap to complete the orange outfit.

The store owner said both shirts looked good on him.

And

Buy two, and the second one is half-price.

He knew the guy was only trying to make a buck, and keeping a men’s clothing store afloat was challenging in a small town.

Back to serious

So, he bought two shirts and a navy baseball hat.

He tried to like the green and parallel stripes.

But finally gave it away.

His tiny contribution to President Obama’s spread the wealth idea.

The other day, draped in orange and topped with blue, he waved to Darrell, the Trump guy.

He wondered about all the things regarding Darrell that he didn’t know.

Darrell, who did look like a pumpkin, smiled and waved back.

Is slowing time down a good idea?

*

You begin to notice auto doppelgangers whenever you buy a new car.

“I didn’t realize there were so many silver Subaru Foresters,” I thought six years ago.

It’s funny what controls our attention.

And alters our perspective.

*

Tuesday, November 5, 2024, will be my 19th American presidential election.

This quadrennial event is on my radar because I taught politics to college students for 40 years.

Soccer has the right idea for aging fans like me. Its National Team Championships are held in four-year cycles, each lasting a month.

The 2024 European Football Championship started on June 14. Today, I will fit my life around three beautiful games.

What about even rarer events, like the 17-year cicada brood and the 20-year total solar eclipse?

I may be 94 at the next concealment of the sun.

How many of each do I have left?

*

The refrigerator you see in the photo is two years old.

Already, the deluxe ice maker is misbehaving.

With more features and technology that can break down, today’s icebox lasts a little over a decade, half the lifetime of my mother’s trusty, simpler machine.

Will I outlast even a machine that was built to break down?

Yesterday, for a Father’s Day gift, my son took me to a screening of 1981’s Raiders of the Lost Ark.

The two-hour film passed in the blink of an eye.

As has Ben’s 34 years.

And the 43 years from when I first sat in wonder at that boulder rushing toward the audience.

It’s already June 17th here in middle America. The summer has not officially started, and it seems half gone.

How do we slow time down?

*

Or is that even a good idea?

Occasionally, I lose track of time when I write.

The late psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi called it being in the “flow.”

I am so immersed in what I’m doing that time flies.

It’s like watching Raiders for the second time yesterday.

Or spending time with my son.

And it’s just happened again.

Time refused to slow down, even when I wrote about wishing that time would slow down.

Is there a lesson?

*

One of my mentors, Mark Lund, gave me advice about 25 years ago that I’ve never forgotten but must continually relearn.

Mark directed my college’s Study Abroad program. I had just returned from my first trip with students to Northern Ireland, proud that I had not spent all the money budgeted for our three-week travel course.

He looked at me and said:

Students pay us for the experience. Your task is to spend ALL their money wisely by giving them the best experience possible.

The money was meant to be spent. All of it!

Why would time be any different?

Today’s random word is billion.

A Drabble is a concise 100-word story that respects your busy schedule. Please stay on the page for thirty seconds so you will count as a reader. Thank you

Today’s story is Historical Fiction.

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6:04.30 PM

April 4, 1968

Room 306, Lorraine Motel

Martin Luther King, Jr. has lived 1.2 billion seconds.

He has only 30 more.

*

Mary Louise Hunt: “Dr. King, I’m 18, a Memphis State freshman, and I want to help. Sometimes, I feel hopeless.

Martin: “Mary, I do as well. Hope is hard.”

Mary: “Why do they hate us?”

“They’re scared, and they hate themselves. I’ve seen it in their faces.”

“How do you keep from hating yourself?”

“I can’t, Mary. I’m a child of God, just as you are. They are as well. We are their salvation.”

“Bless you, Martin.”

Living with and against nature

*

My friend Rick, who lives in the middle of our town, routinely shoots squirrels with a .22 to keep them from messing with his garden.

Taking a more peaceful approach, Rebecca lathers our birdhouse pole with Vicks VapoRub. We’ve never heard our brown and black friends cough.

Two years ago, we built a small screened-in porch in our backyard. The first photo shows the outside view.

Here’s the scene from the inside.

This perspective has gotten me thinking about my place in nature.

Especially when the skunk showed up.

Our Neighbors

We sit among deer, bats, bees, flies, gnats, beetles, and Mr. Skunk.

He surprised us as we watched him stroll across our yard under our human neighbor Hazel’s deck.

I wanted to rush outside to take his picture, but I didn’t for obvious reasons.

When Hazel, 92, called the police, she was given the number of an animal relocation service.

She called Dan, the city’s Animal Relocation Officer.

Why does our human community of 8000 need a Dan?

This photo will help you understand.

Decorah is surrounded by forest and dissected by the Upper Iowa River. The arrow shows you where Hazel and I live. Critters follow a creek bed about two blocks from our home to enjoy our garden offerings and company.

An open borders policy!

Dan traps unwanted animals and takes them outside town.

The skunk escaped two weeks of trapping, but not so for five raccoons, including this one.

An expectant mother, said Dan, as he took her away. He told Hazel the skunk likely would not return, and she would find a new trapped raccoon every morning. So, she decided to put lattice panels under her deck.

Living with and against nature

It’s not easy living with others, human or otherwise.

Is it?

Exactly who is the intruder?

Is it the skunk? Or us?

In a terrific book, Second Nature: A Gardener’s Education, Michael Pollan writes about the woodchuck, his garden’s nemesis:

He was part of a larger, more insidious threat: he labored on behalf of the advancing forest. Not only the animals, but the insects, the weeds, even the fungi and bacteria, were working together to erase my garden — after that my lawn, my driveway, my patio, even my house…The forest is normal, everything else — the fields and meadows, the lawns and pavements, and the gardens — is a disturbance, a kind of ecological vacuum which nature will not abide for long.

Before I read Pollan’s book, I sometimes sat on the porch and apologized to the deer I had just shooed away from our bushes. Or the grass I refused to let grow. In the best line in a book complete with excellent writing, Pollan calls our American lawn “nature under totalitarian rule.”

Well, what I do to these guys would put Stalin to shame.

Japanese beetles were on the leaf of one of our nine little birch trees. A garden shop expert told me it was the beetles or the trees. One tactic involved a solution absorbed by the root system that, over time, will help the tree develop its defenses, like a moat around a castle.

The other tactic was slaughter with a pesticide, think machine gun.

Pollan’s magnificent book is a rationale for what he calls “a middle space between forest and parking lot.”

Nature and humans can live together without us, the ultimate intruders, either acquiescing or dominating.

Twenty-five years ago, two days after I purchased this property, I cut down a healthy apple tree. I didn’t want the rotting apples or the bugs they would attract.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

For a quarter century, I’ve been doing penance. My self-imposed punishment was planting 13 trees and three small gardens.

Come to think of it, not so self-imposed. It’s probably no coincidence that my northeast Iowa community, surrounded by forests, has developed a very environmentally friendly culture.

My community, according to Pollan, has encouraged me to act

Like a sane and civilized human…a creature whose nature is to remake his surroundings and whose culture can guide him on the question of aesthetics and ethics.

Today’s random word is cumbrous

Drabble 153: A mystery.

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This Drabble (100-word story) was published in Medium’s Fiction Shorts.

3 am at a Motel 6

“Would the glove give me away?

It won’t be the shoes. I’m wearing them.

The balls? Well, finally.

Enough is enough.

Everyone is born a murderer.

I’ve thought about it for years.

But yesterday, on the practice range.

I thought she was my friend.

Sweetie, I called her after my mother.

I liked her shape.

We felt good together.

My friends told me we made a good pair.

But she made promises that she did not keep.

And now I can’t sleep.

Because I remember the terror in the eyes

Of my cumbrous driver.”